The state of Wireless HDMI and WirelessHD

HD television may be the wave of the future, but it's a future that's still cluttered by messy wires. Fortunately there are two competing technologies aimed at wirelessly connecting HDTVs to our entertainment setups: Wireless HDMI and WirelessHD. We checked in with the major players in this developing arena to get the scoop on their forthcoming product features and timelines.

Wireless HDMI

Wireless HDMI is exactly what it sounds like: a "high definition multimedia interface" (HDMI) free of cables. Wireless HDMI is not a standard itself, although its backers say that implementations can be non-proprietary when deployed using Ultrawideband (UWB) under the WiMedia standard.

There are currently a few companies that have developed chipsets for this purpose, but the chipsets are just now beginning to be integrated into products that will debut later this year. Some companies that offer chipsets and solutions under the name "Wireless HDMI" are Philips, Tzero Technologies, and Radiospire networks.

Ars spoke with Tzero's Matt Keowen, senior director of corporate marketing, and Dan Karr, senior vice president of marketing and sales. Tzero's Wireless HDMI chipset is called ZeroWire HDMI, and it uses "ultrawideband because it is much more reliable and offers much higher throughput," Keowen said, adding that there's no interference or fading like WiFi.

At the center of Tzero's offering is WiMedia, a UWB standard created by the non-profit WiMedia Alliance. The WiMedia alliance is embraced by heavy hitters in the wireless industry, including Bluetooth and USB Forum implementers as well as research institutions and over 200 international corporations. The aim is to create a way for all UWB devices, which could eventually include laptops, cameras, and set-top boxes, to interact and co-exist in the same environment. Promoters include companies like HP, Microsoft, Nokia, Texas Instruments, Samsung, and Sony.

Tzero says that its embrace of WiMedia will allow ZeroWire HDMI to eventually interact with laptops, cameras, and other technologies that may be on your future personal area network. According to Keowen, Tzero's ZeroWire HDMI can use the WiMedia UWB standard to "deliver more than 300Mbps of sustained throughput for in-room coverage." The theoretical maximum throughput of UWB, however, is 480Mbps.

Tzero's chipset technology will be available in September from Gefen Incorporated. Gefen's product ("The Wireless HDMI Extender") will offer a "perfect replication of high definition visuals (720p, and 1080i) ... at up to 33 feet or 10 meters," according to claims. Gefen uses the word "replication" because it compresses the signal using lossy JPEG 2000 compression. The resulting image quality will be necessarily less than that of wired HDMI, but how much less won't be known until units are out in the wild and we can feast our eyes on them.

Philips and Radiospire were not available for comment at the time of publication. Philips announced a Wireless HDMI product at CES 2007 which was supposed to be available in May. However, the product (SWW1800) is still not available, and there's no word on when it might be coming. Our research indicated that Philip's offering was slated to use UWB, cost $300, and would have supported up to 1080p at a distance of 25 feet, supposedly without compression. Silence from Philips makes us wonder if they canned the product plans.

WirelessHD

Although Samsung, Sony, and others support WiMedia as a standard, they're not using that standard for their own wireless products. Rather, Samsung and Sony, along with NEC Corp, SiBeam, LG, Toshiba, and Panasonic joined together in 2005 to form the WirelessHD Consortium aimed at developing a wireless standard for high-definition audio/video transmission. Ars spoke with Lianne Caetano, executive director of WirelessHD, LLC to find out more about the WiHD standard and its timetable.

Instead of UWB, the WiHD standard utilizes the 60GHz band in order to offer high definition content without the need for compression. According to Caetano, "WirelessHD uses the 7GHz of continuous bandwidth around the 60GHz frequency band. Right now, 60GHz is the only technology that has the spectral availability and allowable power to achieve multi-gigabit data rates for true uncompressed data transport." Instead of offering up to 300Mbps using UWB, like the Tzero ZeroWire HDMI chipset, WiHD will transmit at 5Gbps. While WiHD looks to offer better throughput speeds, Wireless HDMI technologies will be available to consumers first.

Caetano estimates that the first WiHD products will be available to consumers sometime in 2008 and will "typically be built into HDTVs, set top boxes, high defintion disc players," by members of the WirelessHD consortium or adopters of the standard. While it seems like current HDTV owners will be left out of WiHD capabilities, Caetano said she anticipates "that adapter products may be built by some of the WirelessHD adopters."

In the upcoming months, the WirelessHD consortium plans to announce several more members.

The near future

When can we expect to see some of this technology available to consumers? According to Keowen and Karr of Tzero Technologies, we should expect Wireless HDMI products from Monster, Audiovox, Gefen, and others in stores starting in September. Products will include both transmitters and receivers. Gefen currently has a product ready for preorder priced at $699. When asked whether consumers could expect lower prices, Karr said, "others will come out at much lower price points. We expect products in the $299 to $399 price band, and others depending on the brand and distribution." It's still unknown when products from the WiHD standard will be available.